Duck gets good and liquored up on Jack and figures it’s probably a good idea to hop right on down to the jail and shoot that crack-smoking bastard right in the head.  So Duck figures it.  Dottie’s against it.

“They’s only ferns, Ray,” she says.  “Five dollars each.  No need to go shooting nobody.”

“Damn principle of the thing, Dot,” Duck assures her, tossing a clip from his Glock hand to hand.  “Can’t have ‘em stealing flowers right off your front porch.  Can’t allow it.  Society’s got to have some basis.”

“Sure, honey, you right.  But listen, they’s only flowers and not much pretty at that.  Ferns, baby.  Only five dollars.”

“They was two of ‘em.  That makes ten, am I right?  And what got stole last year, how much did they cost?  Them’s sure as hell wasn’t no five bucks a whack.”

“No, honey, but not so much.”

“How much, Dot, tell me.”

He lifts the bottle of Black Jack and bubbles it, fills his mouth where it looks like he’s got mumps, then one big swallow.  Doesn’t even blink.  Duck’s got one giant cracker chromosome in him somewhere, the way Dot figures it, that lets him do such things.   

“I don’t remember, Raymond.  They wasn’t that important, just flowers.”

Which even she doesn’t believe.  Over a hundred a piece those plants were, the first batch that got stolen. 

“They sell ‘em over on MLK Boulevard.  A fern-for-drugs sort of deal, baby, you ever heard of such?  Birds gotta fly, brutha gotta have his crack.”

“Ray, don’t talk like that,” –but it’s really the Jack talking.  “I mean it.  You keep on, I’m going to Mama’s.”

Duck frowns at mention of Mama.  That takes every last ounce of sunshine right out of the moment.  Mama, the dirtiest word in the whole thick dictionary.  He lifts the bottle again, pops the clip into the Glock.  The clip seats itself with a nasty Teutonic precision that gives Dot a quick chill.

He stands and backs onto the screenporch, looks out from under hooded, almost epicanthic eyes, that crazyass stare that goes all the way back to the beginning of redneck.

“I’m going, baby.  I’m going down there and teach that sumbitch about stealing ole Duck and Dot’s ferns.  You’ll see.”

Dot looks at his skinny ass standing in the doorway.  Too many tattoos.  Jeans too tight, not wearing skivvies, his errant package way too thick and visible.  Risible, really — barnyard size hung on a grunion. Giant gun dangling in his hand, corded veins in his arms like ski rope. 

“I’m going, baby.  I see you later.”

“All right, Duck.  Suit yourself.  But remember, they’s only flowers.”

Screen door slamming as Duck rumbles down the steps.

If he goes down to the jail like that, a good chance Sheriff Robby will spatter old Duck across several yards of significant plant matter with some good old double-aught.  But there isn’t much chance of that.  Duck’s got a pretty good talent for talking himself out of really bad ideas right at the last moment.  Duck is real good about mouthing off, but most times the execution is lacking.

  

 

Duck wakes up supine on some good neighbor’s manicured grass, feeling like eight pounds of hammered dog meat, like love gone bad down a mud road. Unable to move, his body a rictus, blood spattered all over his T-shirt. Oh, ho, here we go.  From the vast surround of pain coming from the vicinity of where his head might be, he’s pretty sure the red stuff belongs to him. Truth told, it’s more brownish, so he’s been on the grass for a bit.

I will not move.  I will never move again, then things will be OK. 

Here we go.  Here we go.     

 

Sheriff Robby Markham’s got a problem too this a.m., something about a ruckus out at the Mambo Yo Jambo Club last night.  The report he’s reading for the eleventh time is beyond weird, it’ll take some time to puzzle this one out but one thing is clear: there’s a perp out there who got away. A very bad boy that somehow fell through the cracks.  A very bad boy indeed. 

Another thing is pretty clear.  This one’s got Duck’s M.O. all over it.  Actually, it’s a little stronger than that.  Sheriff Robby imagines that if the M.O. were an actual physical object in the world, it would be a civil defense siren.  It would be Duck’s M.O., his personal civil defense alarm, and it would be caterwauling its damn guts out, just like the courthouse siren did every day at noon.  

The only trouble would be, tracking Duck down and making it stick.  Duck could be slippery and Judge Hank would throw it out unless there were some good physical evidence.  Strong circumstantial might help, but word-of-mouth wouldn’t buy you spit in this lying town.

 

 

 

A miracle.  Old Widow Kern calls to say Duck is passed out or dead on her front lawn. Either way, come and get him. Duck is still on his back, staring wide-eyed into the clear sky when Deputy Bubba Crane speeds up with his flashing blues.  In a snap, quick as being raptured straight to heaven, Duck is sitting before the big man himself.

“Duck, sit right there in that chair for a spell.  You’ll notice it’s missing the leather straps.”

“I ain’t done nothing,” Duck whines.

Sheriff Robby takes a moment to grasp his own face in his thick mitts. He squints, squeezes his nostrils together, shuts his eyes and appears to be trying to scrunch his own head.  A moment passes, two.

“I never heard that one, son.  You need an aspirin?”

“Wouldn’t help.”

Duck is trying his best to sit up straight, but he’s clearly whoozy.

“Let’s make this easy, Duck and I’m going to tell you why.  I’m in a hurry, Duck.  You want to know why I’m hopping fresh here?”

“Sure,” Duck says. “Amuse me.”

“Follow this, Raymond, if you can.  I’m going to go see Doc Bean in about fifteen minutes, which means I haven’t much time.  You want to know why I’m going to see Doc Bean?”

Duck glances up at Bubba Crane.  He's a small man, not much bigger than a silverbacked gorilla.  Trouble is, Bubba’s the baby gorilla in this room.

“I’m all ears.”

“The reason, Raymond, I’m going to see Doc Bean is because I have this very sore thing growing down in my nards and it worries me.  And that makes me irritable.  You know what else it means?”

A smartaleck comment involving Sheriff Markham’s wife flies into Duck’s head, and he grins.  Then he decides against it.

“No, Robert, what’s it mean?”

“It means I’m not in the mood, so let’s get to it.”

“Like I said, I ain’t done nothing.  A person looking like me is generally a victim.”

“There are exceptions.  What’d you do last night, Raymond?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Can’t remember.  OK, let’s try this.  You take your gun with you.”

“Shotgun’s always in the truck.  You know that.”

“I mean your handgun, Duck.  Look at me, son.  I’m really not in the mood.”

Sheriff Robby leans forward, flexes his massive shoulders.  Duck tries his best not to be whoozy.

“Didn’t take it.”

“You can’t remember what you did last night, but you know you didn’t have your gun?”

“Like I said.  You don’t believe me, call Dot.”

“Supreme idea.”

Sheriff Robby pokes in the number from memory.  The buttons on the phone look like Tic Tacs next to his fingers.  Dot picks up on the second ring.

“Dot, Sheriff Markham.  We’ve got your betrothed down here.  He’s right in front of me.”

“Keep him.”

“Dot, this is important.  Do you know Raymond’s whereabouts last night?”

“He got drunk and left.”

“Say when?”

“Right after supper.”

Sheriff Markham decides not to press her on the time.  He can narrow it down later if he needs to.

“He take a gun.”

“Keeps it in the truck.”

“I mean his handgun.”

“The Glock?  I got it away, at the last minute.”

“Thanks, Dot.  I’m sending him home directly.”

“Can’t you put him in the penitentiary?”

“I’m working on it.  Goodbye, Dot.”

“Sheriff?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You working on finding my fern?”

“Top of my list.”

The sheriff eases the phone back into its cradle.

“What’d she say?” Duck asks.

“Your bride says to tell you she loves you.”

Duck smirks, gets that look where he’s ready to mouth off.

“Don’t do it, Raymond, don't make me scrape the gravy off your biscuit.  Bubba, take Mr. Pouree home.  Run him by Doc Bean for a look.  Tell Doc I’ll be right along.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Raymond?  You know anything about a fracas over at the Mambo last night?”

“No.”

The sheriff gives Duck a look he can’t mistake.

“No, what?”

Duck hesitates, then: “No, sir.”

Sheriff Markham picks up some papers and begins reading, lowers his head.

“Get along, Bubba.”

“Yes, sir.”

 As an afterthought, Sheriff Markham fishes around in his back pocket, pulls out his wallet.

“Bubba, hold on a sec.”

He holds forth a ten dollar bill and the deputy takes it.

“Stop by The Dollar on your way.  Pick up some ferns for Mrs. Pouree.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

Right after lunch at Gracie’s, the sheriff cambers over to the Mambo Yo Jambo Club.  In no big hurry, it wasn’t going anywhere.  Down an Alabama road of red clay and white sand sits the ramshackle dogtrot structure, now converted to a honky tonk with a plastering on of random neon beer signs and bare light bulbs bracketing the windows, now in daylight thankfully mute.  A constant hip-hop thump issues from the place, reminding Markham of Claymores, just what he’d like to use to take care of the place.  Big kaboom—done.  More trouble than it’s worth.  More needed paychecks had been pissed away in this shithole than you could count.  Evicting himself from his cruiser with the usual forced effort—a Crown Vic could just barely contain his girth—he girdles his nightstick into his Buster Brown. 

Crossing the transom, the usual fetid reek of stale cigarettes, beer, urine.  At the bar is Pojo — pale blind in one eye, wiping things down with a red-and-white checkered rag.

The sheriff clears his throat.

“Coco in?”    

“Well, if it ain’t Mr. Law.”

The sheriff swipes a toothpick from the bar, opens a jar of pickled eggs and fishes one out.  Two quick bites make short work of it. 

Pojo, he thinks.  Pojo.  Why is the South full of Pojos?  If the South did not believe in evolution, it was for this reason—that there was no clear evidence of it in the peckerwoods.  Genetic uplift of any sort had jumped clean over their heads. The next generation always snookered forth just like the last, runty and dumb, not even one fuzzy helix trying to better itself. Their general surliness comes from an unconscious knowledge of this one basic fact. The sheriff mentally shrugs to himself.  It’s not a charitable thought, he knows it, but it is true. 

He grew up dirt poor himself, so far back in the woods some days you had to hand-pump the sunshine in.  At school, too many days lunch was a hole full of sorghum in the middle of a biscuit, after a holiday maybe a pat or two of butter; a delicious thing, really, but too often grossly insufficient.  There was no dishonor in coming into the world poor; that wasn’t your choice.  But poor and peckerwood were not the same thing.  He had absolutely no forgiveness in his soul for those of the latter-day cracker class, those erstwhile duded-up Snopses with cell phones jammed to their jutting ears.  If they got a brain tumor, how would you know it?   

“How’d that last trip upstate go, Pojo? Strumming on the old banjo, singing the Parchman Blues. You got a good memory of it?”

Pojo frowns, his dead eye a roving tissue, ungimbaled in its socket.

“I was innocent, Mr. Law, you just ask anybody.”

“Anybody don’t count around these here parts, Pojo, you know that.  I heard you didn’t do the whole nickel over in 'sippi, so maybe you shaped up some. You want to go get Coco or we gone have us a little dance?”

Pojo braces himself, stiff, against the bar, bowing up.

“Not recommended, son.  You already down to one eye.  Why don’t you play this smart?” 

“You gone pay for that egg, Mr. Law?”

“No, but you might.  Call me Mr. Law again and maybe we explore the outer limits of your dental plan.  Get hopping, turdbird, I ain’t got all day.”

The barkeeper holds eye contact as long as he dares, then takes a deep breath, the starch visibly seeping from him.  He flings the bar rag down, too close to the sheriff for certain comfort, a risk, and slowly heads for the backroom.  When he is out of sight, the sheriff shakes his head. 

He doesn’t like pushing people around if he can help it, but Pojo called it.  Rule One was not to lose control of a situation. Ever. Even if that situation didn’t particularly matter right at that particular moment.  Never let them see a chink in your armor. It might come back to ravage your ass at the exact wrong moment.  This, and various versions of it, was what he liked to think of as Markham’s Law.  Not original in itself—at least not in the abstract—but its application could be.  Besides, he was doing Pojo a courtesy to ask in the first place.  He could have just as easily walked to the back straight on.  But, the sheriff thought of himself as a usually easy-going sort, no need to ruffle the day if it could be avoided.

“Come on back,” Pojo calls from around the corner.

That’s more like it. A lot more like it.

The sheriff digs down in his pocket, throws a dollar on the bar.

“That’s for the egg.”

“They’s only 50 cents.”

“Remember I have a credit next time I’m in.  It might do you good to remember that.”

Sheriff Robby loggers toward the back, his football limp kicking in full bore.  A sure sign rain's coming on.  Never fails.  The deep pain suggests maybe a storm on Dauphin Island. He lightly brushes the barkeeper as he passes, as though he doesn't exist.

 

 

 

Coco sits there drinking a latte, smoking a cherbidi that lepers in India roll. A vague sweet odor. Cleansing. The drink foams, a blur of cream on top, chocolat sprinkles. The cutesy ambiance Coco affects is current, the high octane of it, historical. The fancy coffee, maybe something he picked up from a magazine or TV show, maybe the yakking heads on a morning show, sipping java while watching, say, Katie Couric with fiberoptic up her patoot, sending the anti-cancer message. 

The latte. Too high falootin for this part of the woods, wherein grits is the high cuisine, but what the hey. Chi-chi could be good, yeah, on occasion, so let it ride. But that was not exactly the point of this drink. The idea here was to get jacked and in a hurry. Set the nerve endings at DefCon 1.

The splash of cocoa, a weirdness in this small burg, a youthful eccentricity, ergo the name.  Yet Coco, a double meaning, obvious as he sits there beefy and brown, the color of maduro.  Shirtless except for a vest of Mardi Gras colors—purple, gold and green— his belly hanging down, an adipose mess, the youthful abs gone to middleage unconcern. A dealer’s green visor is spun backwards on his head, the latte clinging to his lips like melting styrofoam. He smiles when the sheriff lumbers in, Coco’s teeth a mouthful of what used to be. A good dental plan could still fix it, but forget that. Looks don’t matter anymore, whatever he needs he can buy it.

“The high shurf in his glory, strike me dead. Oh, my.”

He pours a double jigger of Crown, knocks it back in one motion. Bloodshot eyes mist over, dew over maroon. 

“That shit go good on your Cheerios, Clarence?”

“Crown’s the color for Fat Tuesday, baby, and you all wrapped in brown. Brown and tan, universal color of The Man.”

“Good to see you too, Clarence.”

“I go by Coco now, my man. My nom de avenue, if ya get my drift.”

“Like a ten foot bank of snow. You have a way with expression, Clarence.”

“And you came by for what, bwana? Good advice? To like maybe swap spit? I’m listening, but not for long.”

“I missed you, Clarence. I got all teary-eyed thinking about it. It’s been a long time.”

“Just like burning in hell, slow but certain. You run out of Negro boyfriends, that why you here?”

“Like I said, pookie, I missed you. So give it up.”

“You funny. A regular belly laugh. You make me want to fart out my own ears.”

“I need to ask you a couple questions, podjo, can I sit?”

“Stand by, here comes the cop shit.”

Markham settles his bulk into a rattan job, a Princess chair a la the Philippines, a piece from the seventies, all gone to wayward.

“So what? Spill, baby. I ain’t got the infinite time, if you get me.”

“Like 60 watts of burnt out love, cuz. Last night, Raymond Pouree, he come by here?”

“Duck?”

“How many Raymond Pourees you know, Clarence?”

“I go by Coco. And the answer is one, to my knowledge. And that’s one too many, by the way. That white boy’s missing a gene or something, like something got lost in the translation, you dig?”

“Help me out here, amigo. He came, he conquered, what the fuck? Tell me what went down.”

“Down? What you think this is, Shaft or something like that, some damn TV show? What went down, The Man asks. Nothing went down, nobody got brown. Duck came in stinking like Milwaukee and the local moonshine still, mouthed off calling us brown people bad names. Something about niggers stealing flowers off his damn porch, that’s pretty much verbatim so feel free to quote me. Clemmit overheard Duck’s abuse and took exception.”

“Clemmit that weighs what?”

“More than you, shurf, and that’s a pantload.”

“That all?”

“That and your boy got bounced pretty good. Clemmit rolled him around in the gravel and tar strips till he got the news. Duck putting this personal spitshine on Clemmit’s footware. Standard procedure. All fair and square though, my man. An equal opportunity asskicking.”

“End of story?”

“End of story. Except that your boy left here all in one piece, with some damage of course. After that, it’s like I could care, you know?”

“You been a big help, Clarence.”

“Coco. That’s the color of brown if you didn’t know it.”

“Have it your way.”

“Check me later, Woodrell. Have Pojo pop the top on a giant frosty for ya. Throw in a pig knuckle, if you’re so disposed. Tell ‘em I said it’s on the house.”

“Maybe next time. And one more thing, sparky. Drop the Woodrell shit. That’s a middle name that’s long forgot, got it?”

“Like rain on a sunny day, my man.”

“No objection?”

“No objections, just trying to get us even on names. You get unelected, maybe we’ll renegotiate.” 

“Ciao.”

“Like the giant hound said at suppertime, my man. Like brown and all around town.”

“Clarence, you need to start writing this shit down. Show it to your head shrinker over at the VA.”

“It’s right here on my Pentium, check it out.”

Markham stands, shifts his bulk.

“Clarence, it’s been a pleasure.”

Coco salutes him with a shot of Crown.

“As always. By the way, Woodrell, what’d Duck do?”

“Got hisself born, that's his punishment.  No relief from it.”

“I hear you, brother. That whole tribe's about a half quart low on chromosomes.  Poor ole Dot, she does her best.”

“Ain't that the Lord's gospel?”

The sheriff moves slowly as he leaves, yet makes a fast grab at Coco's spare tire, gets a fistful and twists it.

“Damn you, Woodrell!!" –as the sheriff saunders out, guffawing and snapping a mock salute – "Just damn you all to hell, anyway!”